At the Cannes Film Festival, which representatives for African cinema? | TV5MONDE

The 76th Festival of Cannes opens Tuesday May 16 on the Croisette. Always focused on Hollywood stars and big American productions, the festival still reserves a significant place for cinema from the African continent, whether in its various selections (official, a certain look), or even within the jury.

• Official selection :

Panel et Adama of Ramata-Toulaye SY (Senegal).

The French director of Senegalese origin has achieved the feat of being in the official selection and therefore in the running for the Palme d’Or with her first feature film, Panel et Adama.

The synopsis tells the story of a young couple living “in a small remote village in the North of Senegal and the world. But the perfect love that unites them is going to be sorely tested by the conventions of the community.” The film, shot in the Pulaar language, features professional and non-professional actors. The technicians are almost all Senegalese.

The film competes as a Senegalese film, even if the co-producers are also Malian and French. This is also the first time that a Senegalese film has been selected.

The film will be presented on Sunday May 21 in Cannes and does not yet have a release date.

Ramata Toulaye-Sy was first a screenwriter. She notably collaborated with the Turkish director Çagla Zencirci and the French director Guillaume Giovanetti for their film Sibelin 2018. In 2019, it is about the adaptation of a Rwandan novel Our Lady of the Nile (by Scholastique Mulasonga), that she is working for a film by Atiq Rahimi.

In April 2020, in full confinement, she shot her first short film, Astel, which was released the following year.

Olfa’s daughters by Kaouther Ben Hania (Tunisia).

It is an experienced Tunisian director and screenwriter who will once again tread the steps of the Palais du Festival. Indeed, in 2017 Kaouther Ben Hania was part of the Un certain regard selection at the Cannes Film Festival, for his third feature film Beauty and the Pack.

Girls d’Olfa is a documentary that explores the life of a Tunisian mother, Olfa, and her 4 daughters, the 2 eldest of whom have disappeared. To make up for the absence of these two girls, the director calls on professional actresses and mixes fiction with documentary in a unique cinematographic device.

Kaouther Ben Hania studied at the School of Arts and Cinema in Tunis and at the Fémis in Paris, before directing numerous feature films and documentaries with a keen eye on society.

Girls d’Olfa will be released in France on July 05, 2023.

Augur de Baology.

First feature film by the Belgian musician, poet, stylist and director of Congolese origin Baloji, Augur tells the story of Koffi, considered a sorcerer (zabolo) and chased away by his mother. He returned to Lubumbashi 15 years later to pay his dowry, accompanied by his future wife, Alice.

The plot explores the weight of beliefs on everyone’s destiny through four characters accused of being wizards and witches, who will find a way to help each other out of their assignment in a phantasmagoric Africa.

The film, shot in the DRC is a Belgian, Dutch, Congolese, South African, French and German co-production and does not yet have a release date. It is the first DRC film to be selected at Cannes.

After a career as a rapper with the Belgian group Starflam and solo with 3 albums, Baloji has already started a new career as a director with clips of some of his songs (Peau de chagrin – Midnight blue), but also short films (Zombies) and advertisements. His achievements are borrowed from poetry and dreamlike, anchored on the African territory.

He also starred in the movie Binti by Frederike Migom, which earned him a nomination for the Magritte for Best Male Newcomer, in Belgium.

Goodbye Julia by Mohamed Kordofani (Sudan).

The film directed by Sudanese Mohamed Kordofani features Mona, a retired North Sudanese singer who caused the accidental death of a South Sudanese man. She tries to redeem herself by hiring her widow Julia as a servant, without telling her of her role.

It is the first feature film directed and written by Mohamed Kordofani, but also the first Sudanese film to be selected at Cannes.

Kordofani discusses the events that led to the 2011 referendum on the independence of South Sudan, and the tensions between the two areas.

After Abyad (The mother of all lies) by Asmae El Moudir (Morocco).

In this film, the Moroccan director returns to family lies and the memory of her neighborhood in Casablanca and her country. Between personal and national history, After Abyad also recounts the bread riots that Morocco experienced in 1981.

Asmae el Moudir studied documentary cinema at the University of Tetouan in Morocco, production at the communication institute in Rabat, and at the Fémis in Paris. After a few short films, she embarked on her first feature, After Abyad.

packs de Kamal Lazrak (Maroc).

Hassan and his son Issam live in the working-class neighborhoods of Casablanca chaining small traffic. One night, they are tasked with kidnapping a man.

This is the first film by Moroccan director Kamal Lazraq, who also graduated from La Fémis in Paris in 2011. This feature film is in fact a sequel to one of his short films, Moul Lkelb (The man with the dog). He shows characters on the margins of society, in situations of poverty.

• Jury: two representatives from the African continent

The Story of the Bird is a filmmaker born in Zambia but raised in Wales. She now lives in Lisbon.

A graduate of the University of Arts in London, she has made several award-winning short films, including The List for which she won a BAFTA Cymru, a prize that rewards Welsh cinema, or even Listen which won Best Short Film at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar.

His first feature film, I’m not a witch was screened at Cannes and received the BAFTA for best first film in 2018. She is currently finishing her next film, On becoming a Guinea fowl.

Maryam Touzani is a Moroccan screenwriter and director who started out as a film critic at the start of her career.

It begins with short films like Aya goes to the beachthen collaborated with her husband Nabil Ayouch on Much love. In 2019, she directed her first feature, Adam, selected in the section In some perspective of the Cannes festival. The film addresses the issue of single mothers in Morocco.

She co-wrote with Nabil Ayouch his next two films, Raid et High and loud, selected at Cannes in 2021. In 2022, his second film, Le Bleu du Caftan is presented at Cannes, still in the selection In some perspective. The film which talks about homosexuality and the art of embroidery in Morocco is also pre-selected for the Oscars.